Brown,C_OH5_001

Abstract: This is an oral history of Connie Brown. It was conducted March 1, 2007 and concerns her recollections of the history of the Marriott-Slaterville area.
CB: My name—I was christened Clonda Elizabeth Stanger. I changed that. I have a nickname now and I am called Connie all the time to everybody. I was born in a red brick house down here on the corner just a block away from where I am right now. It is 1900 West 700 South. My parents were Archie Stanger and Beatrice Home Stanger. Dad was born here just up the street just east of here half a mile and I think he lived in Marriott all his life too. My mother came from Wilson Lane—over south. Her mother had a great pioneer story. We were all just common, ordinary people. We were poor and we didn’t know we were poor. I never knew what poor meant because I was so rich with love and fun and blessings. We had plenty of food. We raised our own lovely, big gardens and our big farm. We had all the tomatoes and green peas and corn and everything we could possibly eat. Yes, I knew how to farm. I got an awful sore back because I think of all the potatoes I lifted—and sugar beets. But I did it. I really loved to farm. I wouldn’t trade my younger years for anything. We went out on the farm I imagine when we were six, seven, eight years old and worked all day.
On the farm, I’ll tell you, I learned to work. I am proud of the fact that I know how to work and appreciate work. We would get up in the morning fairly early. Mom would always have breakfast for us and we would don on some old overalls that my brothers had thrown away and old shoes that my brothers had discarded. The shoes always had big holes in the sole and in the bottom of my feet now I have a callus about this big around from where the holes were. We would take a piece of cardboard in our overall pocket and we would keep putting a new inner-sole in our shoe to keep that hot, sunny, hard dirt from hurting us. But we didn’t mind that. That was fun. We worked right along as a family. Dad worked right with us and mother some of the times worked with us but she had a lot of housework to do. Early in the spring we would have to stay out of school sometimes a little bit to thin the sugar beets. That was fun. My dad would take a long handled hoe and go along in front of me and my sister Sally and he would chop the beets so there would just be a little handful of about six little plants left and we had to pull all of them out but one so that one would grow into a big beet. All summer long they needed to be hoed to get the weeds out so they would mature and then in the fall—about in November—we would have to top the sugar beets. Boy, they were so big I would have to set one on my knee. It’s a wonder I didn’t cut my leg off with that big beet on it. It was hard, hard work for the sugar beets.
Dad would plow the beets up out of the ground and then me and all my brothers and sisters—we’d come along the row and the knife had a little hook on it. It was just a great big butcher knife and it had a little hook on it and you would snag that sugar beet and you’d lift it up and—the boys, they could hold it in their hand and whop it usually, but I would have to lay mine on my knee and chop the top off and then we would throw them in a big pile. The boys, later, would come along and throw them up into the big dump trucks and they would take them over to Wilson Lane to the sugar factory to be processed. One year, I stayed out of school the whole first six weeks of school to help with the harvest. I am sure that is because dad didn’t have any money to pay for help. That is the only “D” I ever got in school. The first six weeks when the report card came it just had written on it “not sufficient attendance” and that about broke my heart.
But then we had potatoes and there was a big machine and it had a little rotator wheel on it. We had already cut the potatoes in little pieces of potato—maybe six or eight little pieces and each little piece had an eye in it. You know how the eyes on potatoes are? We had to make sure that there was an eye on each one of those little pieces of potato and then dad would leave them to kind of dry for about a week. He called it “healing.” Then we would put the sack up in a place on the potato planter and the machinery would just bring it down. We would have to make sure there was one set—one little piece of potato in each of these little gadget things on this wheel. The machinery would take them down in the soil and cover them up and then we would pull them about twice a year. In the fall, dad always had his two brothers and all us kids to do the potatoes. He would go along and plow them up and there was a big machine called the sorter. It would go along and it had two or three levels of wire and the little holes in the first wire would let all the rocks and the little tiny nubby potatoes go through and they would go back on the ground and then the bigger potatoes on top of that. They’d all fall out onto the ground and us kids would have to pick them up. We would have old buckets and anything we could have—just buckets. I can remember lifting those buckets and putting these potatoes up on the sorter to go through and my back would nearly break. My uncles would say, “Connie, let me lift that for you.” And I was so stubborn I thought, “Well, I am going to show them I can do it myself.” And I did. I lifted all those potato buckets up myself. So now today I have a back to pay for that.
And tomatoes they were fun. Oh gosh, dad would—we had a tomato planter too—and it would put a little bit of water in a hole and we would see that the tomato plant got in there and put the dirt up around those tomato plants. As they would grow we would have to go through the field and make sure that all of them took root and grew or else we just had to hand transplant some tomatoes. It was so fun when they got big and we would—not sneak, but we would go up and down those rows looking for a little red tomato down in those vines. That was really neat. Then, of course, picking them—we had a big flat box—I guess it weighed about seventy-five pounds of tomatoes and we would just lift that along. Us girls—any of us would just have to lift those boxes along and fill it full of tomatoes. Then the trucks would come along and gather it up.
The green peas—the boys did all that because they would have to get up real early in the morning. Dad wanted to cut the peas while there was some dew on them—while they were crisp and nice. He would get up and mow them down with a mowing machine. Then the boys and dad would load them on a big hay rack. The pea viner is just down on this next corner west. All the farmers would bring their pea trucks full of peas down past my dad’s house here. By nine o’clock all of us kids were out there pulling peas off the wagon and we would run along by the side of the road and eat the peas. They would process them down at the pea viner.
When I got a little bit older, beans—some of the farmers—Ed Dayne was the first one I think that contracted with—I guess it was Del Monty, and he raised just acres and acres and acres of green beans. Later, my dad also did because he had grown down at “the lane,” we called it here, to the dead end. That whole area down there was just full of beans. That is the first paying job us kids had. We earned a penny a pound. We thought that was so neat but I loved to pick the green beans and the yellow beans. You just crawl along between two rows and snatch them off in handfuls. It was really and truly fun. All those city dudes—they came out here on the country farms to earn money and it was funny. Here us kids were with our old overalls and straw hats and all these city dudes had these “panama hats” they called them—they were all colored, pretty hats and nice overalls and shirts. We could work harder than they did. All the neighboring towns—it was just a big mass production thing. It was great. That way I was able to earn all my school clothes and whatever I needed money for.
I remember one year working out in the red beet field down there and I picked up a big crate that had a big wire on it and I have still got the scar on my finger. It was more than an inch like a “Y.” That thing bled—so the boss of the field just took me in and tore off his shirt tail and if I remember correctly he dipped that in the gas can and wrapped my finger up. I got to sit under the tree for about a half an hour to recuperate. Then I was back in the field working again but no doctors, no nothing like that. I never did have to go to the doctor for all the scrapes. Maybe that is enough of the farm work.
When we would come home from the farm at noon, our transportation was horse and wagon. We’d all load on the wagon and go over to the field. Part of our field that dad rented was over in the top part of Slaterville over by the Meyerhoffer’s. Mostly over there we raised sugar beets, that is what I remember over there most. But I liked to work over there because there were a few little swampy areas that had bullrushes and they would have the prettiest wild flowers and birds in there. I just loved every time dad would let us rest for awhile. I didn’t rest, I would hurry over and watch the birds and things like that. There was about three apple trees along the end of the field and we would always go down there and see if there was an apple or so that we could eat. That was fun.
When we would work we would come home at noon and sometimes we would ride on the back of the horse and other times we would just jump in the wagon and ride home. Mother was home and we’d get there and she would have dinner all ready except us girls would set the table, that is about all that was left for us to do, just help put the vittles on the table. The times that we did help get dinner ready we would mostly just peel the potatoes and carrots and shuck the corn and that sort of thing. Mother did most of the cooking herself. She always had a pie or cake for dessert, always. We had the best dinners, always good dinners.
We all had our chores to do in the house. I had one of the boy’s bedrooms to clean and my other sisters had different things to do. My main job, too, was to make sure that there was wood in the box by the coal stove and a bucket of coal ready for morning. We knew enough to do that before we played. After we would get through with supper then we could go out and play ball. The neighborhood kids, you know, we’d get together and play “Run Sheepy Run” and all those old fashioned games. We had just a lot of fun doing that. After my grandfather died—my grandma was, I guess, afraid to stay alone and it became my job to go up and stay with her at night. I would always stop at Slater’s house and the whole bunch of us would get together and play “Run Sheepy Run” and all those kinds of games. By the time I got to grandmas it was about dark but she never got after me.
Oh dear, but then on wash day—that was a real big thing. We just had the wringer washer and then we would have a big tub of water sitting on a bench and us kids mostly would—as the clothes would come through the wringer, we would help rinse them in this tub of water. We didn’t really do much with the washing but the boys’ dirty socks, we had to sort them out and everything before mom would wash those. Then we would help hang them out on the fence line, the stockings. Mother would hang them on the lines. We didn’t do that.
In order to have hot water to do our washing and we had a certain day that we washed—always kind of a routine, at the side of our old coal stove was a reservoir. We didn’t have hot water tanks. We would have kettles on top of the stove to get the water hot and then this reservoir. We would carry that and put it in the washing machine—it was just like a great big tub, a big brown tub, and it was electric. Mother made her own soap; I never did help with that very much. You made it out of lye and different things. We would get the washing going and when it would run for twenty minutes or so mom would shut it off and then she would run the clothes through the wringer. A wringer was just kind of like—I don’t know, lots of machinery has wringers, but it would be two double rollers and it would just squish the water out of the clothes and then there was a great big tub sitting there and we would rinse them out. Sometimes we had to rinse them twice. Then mother would hang them out, I wasn’t tall enough to help lift it up onto the clothes lines.
I forgot to tell you about thrashing machines. Oh, that was a day we looked forward to every year. Dad raised quite a bit of grain and Clem Eakins had the thrashing machine. It was a great big, loud, noisy old thing and he would come into the farm and he always had about twelve men helping him. I don’t quite know how to explain how that works but anyway, it would separate the grain from the stalk and then it would blow all of the straw up into a great big pile and the grain would be shifted down into gunny sacks and they would tie them up and then go dump it into the grainery. At about noon they would stop their big machinery and mother would have dinner ready for twelve big men. We would always have a few tubs of water out under the clothes lines so they would wash up for dinner and about four or five towels hanging over the clothes lines. That was a dirty job. They would all wash up and then come into mom’s kitchen and she would have a feast like a thanksgiving dinner always for them. Pies and cakes and just everything you can imagine. They ate like real working men and they loved mother’s cooking. When they were all done then us girls and mom could have our dinner, then we would do the dishes and clean up after that mess. When they were through with my dad’s grain then they would go to the next farm and do their grain and they would just go on around the neighborhood doing that.
On the fourth of July we would go over to Slaterville sometimes and they would have a—I don’t know if it was the fourth of July or the twenty-fourth—sometime in July, anyway there was always a big to do down in Slaterville. We would just go there and celebrate with them. They would have foot races and ball games and all that stuff that goes on in the outdoor activity. That was always fun. I remember one year I won the foot race and I got the cutest fan made out of feathers. I still have got part of that fan in my cedar chest. It was ball games a lot. I loved to play ball and at school we played ball. We didn’t have tournaments but we did play with the other towns a little bit. It wasn’t anything like it is today. It was just a great sport and our schoolhouse was just across the street from where the Internal Revenue Service building is right now.
Of course, the best part of our life, I guess, was learning about the gospel. My folks saw to it that we were all ready for Sunday school in the mornings on Sunday and we would go to church. I always have liked going to church. The gospel has just been a big part in my life that has been important really. We would have ward reunions every year in February. My dad, his job was to gather up the food. All the whole town would make different things for the dinner and dad would come around in the bob sleigh and gather up the food and take it back up to the church house. Then he would stand at the door and take tickets. He would pin a little ribbon on everybody as they paid so everyone—you know, you knew who was entitled to come in. But that was fun. Then we would have a big dinner and then they would go upstairs in the meeting house and dance and have programs. It seemed like they all came home to do their chores around four o’clock and then everybody would go back again at night and they would have another lunch. I suppose the leftovers—I don’t know. Then we would have the big dance at night. The floors in that dance hall—I am surprised that they didn’t cave in. That was really, really fun. Our school house was right across the street there. I have two of the best teachers in my first grade and in my third grade, Miss Robins, I forgot her first name, and Miss Stallings. I just loved them. They were fun. Then we had Mr. Weissig later and Mr. Burnett was our principal. He lived to be over a hundred. He was a great man. Everybody loved him. But the boys, they played lots of ball. They had a lot of good athletes come out of this neighborhood.
We talked a little bit about the missions. My two older brothers didn’t go on missions and I really believe it was because of lack of money. We were farmers and dad worked awfully hard but dad was—he believed in saving to buy something or pay for something. He didn’t believe in charging furniture and things like that. We had just the bare necessities. Then when his crops were paid—when he got the check for his crops in the fall he would get his bills all paid off but my brothers were both really good kids. I think it was lack of money. I don’t remember any of the boys really going on a mission. Maybe it was because I was younger. And then when I got out of high school—I went to the Weber High School up on 12th and Washington. When I got out of high school there was no money for college so I went to work at S.H. Crest Dime Store. I got on the minute I asked. He just hired me. Then I had no way to get back and forth to work. Us kids would walk up to town and the years earlier than that on a Sunday afternoon sometimes us girls would go walk to town to buy a malt, an ice cream cone. We would walk up there and just laugh all the way up and back a couple of miles. Sometimes we would go to a picture show. At that time picture shows were ten cents and fifteen cents. The Paramount was fifteen. One thing I remember so vividly and it was so much fun—on a Sunday afternoon after church and after dinner was all cleaned up and put away, dad would go out and hook up the big work horses, and he had a big bob sleigh and he would put a bunch of straw in it so it would be nice and comfortable and warm, and we were able to invite some of our friends to come and go with us. Mother would heat up the flat irons. Our flat irons were not electric; we heated them on the stove. But mother would wrap those up in a blanket and put a couple of blankets in the sleigh and we would go get in that big old bob sleigh and dad would take us clear down as far as west Weber, those horses trotting along. He had some great big sleigh bells that he hooked onto their harnesses and just that jingle jangle all the way down the road and us kids laughing in the sleigh and out of the sleigh, rolling around. It was just wonderful, an experience like that.
I am not sure the year but I think it was about—let’s see, I was born in twenty—I think it was about in 1930 when that bank went broke. I had never heard dad and mother talk about losing their money. But I knew something was wrong with dad. He would just kind of mope around. I loved to be down around the barn with dad. I liked to go down and gather the eggs and things like that. I can just remember dad walking around just like he hurt and he lost all his money. I don’t suppose it was very much, I never did know how much, but he didn’t complain about it.
We raised all our own food on the farm. We always had a big pit for potatoes and carrots and we always had apples. In the summertime we would just can or bottle, rather, peaches and apricots and pears and all kinds of fruit for the winter time. We were prepared. We talk about a two year supply, we certainly did our two year supply and we all helped do it. I just love to peel peaches to this day. It was great.
Dad was very friendly and my friends were always welcome at my house. Dad liked to joke and kid them along, more so than mother did. Mother was more serious but it was fun to have friends. At night we would—we didn’t have televisions, we’d pop corn and we had an old grafonola, it was a real nice piece of furniture and we’d play records on it. I can’t remember too many of the songs but we had one called “Halleluiah, I’m a Bum!” We used to just love to hear that. And “The Red River Valley” and off the bat right now I can’t remember the songs, but it was just good entertainment for us and we’d play checkers and some kind of cards like Old Maid and Rummy, just a few games like that.
My dad used to like to help people but he’d never—you didn’t know he was doing it. He would just go help. I had two aunts, one of my uncles was in the war and I know my dad took Aunt Edna food all the time and just help her out. He did the same thing for Aunt Eath, we helped them an awfully lot. On my mother’s side, grandma lived to be ninety years old. She had been a widow for many, many years. On Sunday afternoon we would drive over and get her wash—over to Wilson Lane, get her wash and bring back and we would wash it and iron it and then the next Sunday we would take that back to her clean and bring her soiled clothes back for the next week.
My life it getting kind of near to the end. I am getting to be one of those old senior citizens. I have got a big family. I have five boys. My husband passed away almost eleven years ago. But I have had a life that I am so grateful for. I have just been blessed. I have had illnesses but when you think of what the Savior went through you don’t have anything to complain about. I am so thankful for the gospel in my life. It just has gotten me through any situation that I have had. I truly believe the gospel is true one hundred percent. Anybody that will follow and try to keep the commandments and try to keep their lives clean and helpful—charity is truly one of the greatest blessings you can give to other people. I certainly learned hard work when I was growing up and I have never been free from hard work. I love to work. I feel bad that I can’t work now. When I had to give up my flower garden I didn’t think I was going to make it, but my husband took the job over and all my kids have learned to work, every one of them. They have all learned to stay out of debt and to take care of their families. I think just learning to help other people and staying happy, be thankful for what the Lord has given you.

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Abstract: This is an oral history of Connie Brown. It was conducted March 1, 2007 and concerns her recollections of the history of the Marriott-Slaterville area.
CB: My name—I was christened Clonda Elizabeth Stanger. I changed that. I have a nickname now and I am called Connie all the time to everybody. I was born in a red brick house down here on the corner just a block away from where I am right now. It is 1900 West 700 South. My parents were Archie Stanger and Beatrice Home Stanger. Dad was born here just up the street just east of here half a mile and I think he lived in Marriott all his life too. My mother came from Wilson Lane—over south. Her mother had a great pioneer story. We were all just common, ordinary people. We were poor and we didn’t know we were poor. I never knew what poor meant because I was so rich with love and fun and blessings. We had plenty of food. We raised our own lovely, big gardens and our big farm. We had all the tomatoes and green peas and corn and everything we could possibly eat. Yes, I knew how to farm. I got an awful sore back because I think of all the potatoes I lifted—and sugar beets. But I did it. I really loved to farm. I wouldn’t trade my younger years for anything. We went out on the farm I imagine when we were six, seven, eight years old and worked all day.
On the farm, I’ll tell you, I learned to work. I am proud of the fact that I know how to work and appreciate work. We would get up in the morning fairly early. Mom would always have breakfast for us and we would don on some old overalls that my brothers had thrown away and old shoes that my brothers had discarded. The shoes always had big holes in the sole and in the bottom of my feet now I have a callus about this big around from where the holes were. We would take a piece of cardboard in our overall pocket and we would keep putting a new inner-sole in our shoe to keep that hot, sunny, hard dirt from hurting us. But we didn’t mind that. That was fun. We worked right along as a family. Dad worked right with us and mother some of the times worked with us but she had a lot of housework to do. Early in the spring we would have to stay out of school sometimes a little bit to thin the sugar beets. That was fun. My dad would take a long handled hoe and go along in front of me and my sister Sally and he would chop the beets so there would just be a little handful of about six little plants left and we had to pull all of them out but one so that one would grow into a big beet. All summer long they needed to be hoed to get the weeds out so they would mature and then in the fall—about in November—we would have to top the sugar beets. Boy, they were so big I would have to set one on my knee. It’s a wonder I didn’t cut my leg off with that big beet on it. It was hard, hard work for the sugar beets.
Dad would plow the beets up out of the ground and then me and all my brothers and sisters—we’d come along the row and the knife had a little hook on it. It was just a great big butcher knife and it had a little hook on it and you would snag that sugar beet and you’d lift it up and—the boys, they could hold it in their hand and whop it usually, but I would have to lay mine on my knee and chop the top off and then we would throw them in a big pile. The boys, later, would come along and throw them up into the big dump trucks and they would take them over to Wilson Lane to the sugar factory to be processed. One year, I stayed out of school the whole first six weeks of school to help with the harvest. I am sure that is because dad didn’t have any money to pay for help. That is the only “D” I ever got in school. The first six weeks when the report card came it just had written on it “not sufficient attendance” and that about broke my heart.
But then we had potatoes and there was a big machine and it had a little rotator wheel on it. We had already cut the potatoes in little pieces of potato—maybe six or eight little pieces and each little piece had an eye in it. You know how the eyes on potatoes are? We had to make sure that there was an eye on each one of those little pieces of potato and then dad would leave them to kind of dry for about a week. He called it “healing.” Then we would put the sack up in a place on the potato planter and the machinery would just bring it down. We would have to make sure there was one set—one little piece of potato in each of these little gadget things on this wheel. The machinery would take them down in the soil and cover them up and then we would pull them about twice a year. In the fall, dad always had his two brothers and all us kids to do the potatoes. He would go along and plow them up and there was a big machine called the sorter. It would go along and it had two or three levels of wire and the little holes in the first wire would let all the rocks and the little tiny nubby potatoes go through and they would go back on the ground and then the bigger potatoes on top of that. They’d all fall out onto the ground and us kids would have to pick them up. We would have old buckets and anything we could have—just buckets. I can remember lifting those buckets and putting these potatoes up on the sorter to go through and my back would nearly break. My uncles would say, “Connie, let me lift that for you.” And I was so stubborn I thought, “Well, I am going to show them I can do it myself.” And I did. I lifted all those potato buckets up myself. So now today I have a back to pay for that.
And tomatoes they were fun. Oh gosh, dad would—we had a tomato planter too—and it would put a little bit of water in a hole and we would see that the tomato plant got in there and put the dirt up around those tomato plants. As they would grow we would have to go through the field and make sure that all of them took root and grew or else we just had to hand transplant some tomatoes. It was so fun when they got big and we would—not sneak, but we would go up and down those rows looking for a little red tomato down in those vines. That was really neat. Then, of course, picking them—we had a big flat box—I guess it weighed about seventy-five pounds of tomatoes and we would just lift that along. Us girls—any of us would just have to lift those boxes along and fill it full of tomatoes. Then the trucks would come along and gather it up.
The green peas—the boys did all that because they would have to get up real early in the morning. Dad wanted to cut the peas while there was some dew on them—while they were crisp and nice. He would get up and mow them down with a mowing machine. Then the boys and dad would load them on a big hay rack. The pea viner is just down on this next corner west. All the farmers would bring their pea trucks full of peas down past my dad’s house here. By nine o’clock all of us kids were out there pulling peas off the wagon and we would run along by the side of the road and eat the peas. They would process them down at the pea viner.
When I got a little bit older, beans—some of the farmers—Ed Dayne was the first one I think that contracted with—I guess it was Del Monty, and he raised just acres and acres and acres of green beans. Later, my dad also did because he had grown down at “the lane,” we called it here, to the dead end. That whole area down there was just full of beans. That is the first paying job us kids had. We earned a penny a pound. We thought that was so neat but I loved to pick the green beans and the yellow beans. You just crawl along between two rows and snatch them off in handfuls. It was really and truly fun. All those city dudes—they came out here on the country farms to earn money and it was funny. Here us kids were with our old overalls and straw hats and all these city dudes had these “panama hats” they called them—they were all colored, pretty hats and nice overalls and shirts. We could work harder than they did. All the neighboring towns—it was just a big mass production thing. It was great. That way I was able to earn all my school clothes and whatever I needed money for.
I remember one year working out in the red beet field down there and I picked up a big crate that had a big wire on it and I have still got the scar on my finger. It was more than an inch like a “Y.” That thing bled—so the boss of the field just took me in and tore off his shirt tail and if I remember correctly he dipped that in the gas can and wrapped my finger up. I got to sit under the tree for about a half an hour to recuperate. Then I was back in the field working again but no doctors, no nothing like that. I never did have to go to the doctor for all the scrapes. Maybe that is enough of the farm work.
When we would come home from the farm at noon, our transportation was horse and wagon. We’d all load on the wagon and go over to the field. Part of our field that dad rented was over in the top part of Slaterville over by the Meyerhoffer’s. Mostly over there we raised sugar beets, that is what I remember over there most. But I liked to work over there because there were a few little swampy areas that had bullrushes and they would have the prettiest wild flowers and birds in there. I just loved every time dad would let us rest for awhile. I didn’t rest, I would hurry over and watch the birds and things like that. There was about three apple trees along the end of the field and we would always go down there and see if there was an apple or so that we could eat. That was fun.
When we would work we would come home at noon and sometimes we would ride on the back of the horse and other times we would just jump in the wagon and ride home. Mother was home and we’d get there and she would have dinner all ready except us girls would set the table, that is about all that was left for us to do, just help put the vittles on the table. The times that we did help get dinner ready we would mostly just peel the potatoes and carrots and shuck the corn and that sort of thing. Mother did most of the cooking herself. She always had a pie or cake for dessert, always. We had the best dinners, always good dinners.
We all had our chores to do in the house. I had one of the boy’s bedrooms to clean and my other sisters had different things to do. My main job, too, was to make sure that there was wood in the box by the coal stove and a bucket of coal ready for morning. We knew enough to do that before we played. After we would get through with supper then we could go out and play ball. The neighborhood kids, you know, we’d get together and play “Run Sheepy Run” and all those old fashioned games. We had just a lot of fun doing that. After my grandfather died—my grandma was, I guess, afraid to stay alone and it became my job to go up and stay with her at night. I would always stop at Slater’s house and the whole bunch of us would get together and play “Run Sheepy Run” and all those kinds of games. By the time I got to grandmas it was about dark but she never got after me.
Oh dear, but then on wash day—that was a real big thing. We just had the wringer washer and then we would have a big tub of water sitting on a bench and us kids mostly would—as the clothes would come through the wringer, we would help rinse them in this tub of water. We didn’t really do much with the washing but the boys’ dirty socks, we had to sort them out and everything before mom would wash those. Then we would help hang them out on the fence line, the stockings. Mother would hang them on the lines. We didn’t do that.
In order to have hot water to do our washing and we had a certain day that we washed—always kind of a routine, at the side of our old coal stove was a reservoir. We didn’t have hot water tanks. We would have kettles on top of the stove to get the water hot and then this reservoir. We would carry that and put it in the washing machine—it was just like a great big tub, a big brown tub, and it was electric. Mother made her own soap; I never did help with that very much. You made it out of lye and different things. We would get the washing going and when it would run for twenty minutes or so mom would shut it off and then she would run the clothes through the wringer. A wringer was just kind of like—I don’t know, lots of machinery has wringers, but it would be two double rollers and it would just squish the water out of the clothes and then there was a great big tub sitting there and we would rinse them out. Sometimes we had to rinse them twice. Then mother would hang them out, I wasn’t tall enough to help lift it up onto the clothes lines.
I forgot to tell you about thrashing machines. Oh, that was a day we looked forward to every year. Dad raised quite a bit of grain and Clem Eakins had the thrashing machine. It was a great big, loud, noisy old thing and he would come into the farm and he always had about twelve men helping him. I don’t quite know how to explain how that works but anyway, it would separate the grain from the stalk and then it would blow all of the straw up into a great big pile and the grain would be shifted down into gunny sacks and they would tie them up and then go dump it into the grainery. At about noon they would stop their big machinery and mother would have dinner ready for twelve big men. We would always have a few tubs of water out under the clothes lines so they would wash up for dinner and about four or five towels hanging over the clothes lines. That was a dirty job. They would all wash up and then come into mom’s kitchen and she would have a feast like a thanksgiving dinner always for them. Pies and cakes and just everything you can imagine. They ate like real working men and they loved mother’s cooking. When they were all done then us girls and mom could have our dinner, then we would do the dishes and clean up after that mess. When they were through with my dad’s grain then they would go to the next farm and do their grain and they would just go on around the neighborhood doing that.
On the fourth of July we would go over to Slaterville sometimes and they would have a—I don’t know if it was the fourth of July or the twenty-fourth—sometime in July, anyway there was always a big to do down in Slaterville. We would just go there and celebrate with them. They would have foot races and ball games and all that stuff that goes on in the outdoor activity. That was always fun. I remember one year I won the foot race and I got the cutest fan made out of feathers. I still have got part of that fan in my cedar chest. It was ball games a lot. I loved to play ball and at school we played ball. We didn’t have tournaments but we did play with the other towns a little bit. It wasn’t anything like it is today. It was just a great sport and our schoolhouse was just across the street from where the Internal Revenue Service building is right now.
Of course, the best part of our life, I guess, was learning about the gospel. My folks saw to it that we were all ready for Sunday school in the mornings on Sunday and we would go to church. I always have liked going to church. The gospel has just been a big part in my life that has been important really. We would have ward reunions every year in February. My dad, his job was to gather up the food. All the whole town would make different things for the dinner and dad would come around in the bob sleigh and gather up the food and take it back up to the church house. Then he would stand at the door and take tickets. He would pin a little ribbon on everybody as they paid so everyone—you know, you knew who was entitled to come in. But that was fun. Then we would have a big dinner and then they would go upstairs in the meeting house and dance and have programs. It seemed like they all came home to do their chores around four o’clock and then everybody would go back again at night and they would have another lunch. I suppose the leftovers—I don’t know. Then we would have the big dance at night. The floors in that dance hall—I am surprised that they didn’t cave in. That was really, really fun. Our school house was right across the street there. I have two of the best teachers in my first grade and in my third grade, Miss Robins, I forgot her first name, and Miss Stallings. I just loved them. They were fun. Then we had Mr. Weissig later and Mr. Burnett was our principal. He lived to be over a hundred. He was a great man. Everybody loved him. But the boys, they played lots of ball. They had a lot of good athletes come out of this neighborhood.
We talked a little bit about the missions. My two older brothers didn’t go on missions and I really believe it was because of lack of money. We were farmers and dad worked awfully hard but dad was—he believed in saving to buy something or pay for something. He didn’t believe in charging furniture and things like that. We had just the bare necessities. Then when his crops were paid—when he got the check for his crops in the fall he would get his bills all paid off but my brothers were both really good kids. I think it was lack of money. I don’t remember any of the boys really going on a mission. Maybe it was because I was younger. And then when I got out of high school—I went to the Weber High School up on 12th and Washington. When I got out of high school there was no money for college so I went to work at S.H. Crest Dime Store. I got on the minute I asked. He just hired me. Then I had no way to get back and forth to work. Us kids would walk up to town and the years earlier than that on a Sunday afternoon sometimes us girls would go walk to town to buy a malt, an ice cream cone. We would walk up there and just laugh all the way up and back a couple of miles. Sometimes we would go to a picture show. At that time picture shows were ten cents and fifteen cents. The Paramount was fifteen. One thing I remember so vividly and it was so much fun—on a Sunday afternoon after church and after dinner was all cleaned up and put away, dad would go out and hook up the big work horses, and he had a big bob sleigh and he would put a bunch of straw in it so it would be nice and comfortable and warm, and we were able to invite some of our friends to come and go with us. Mother would heat up the flat irons. Our flat irons were not electric; we heated them on the stove. But mother would wrap those up in a blanket and put a couple of blankets in the sleigh and we would go get in that big old bob sleigh and dad would take us clear down as far as west Weber, those horses trotting along. He had some great big sleigh bells that he hooked onto their harnesses and just that jingle jangle all the way down the road and us kids laughing in the sleigh and out of the sleigh, rolling around. It was just wonderful, an experience like that.
I am not sure the year but I think it was about—let’s see, I was born in twenty—I think it was about in 1930 when that bank went broke. I had never heard dad and mother talk about losing their money. But I knew something was wrong with dad. He would just kind of mope around. I loved to be down around the barn with dad. I liked to go down and gather the eggs and things like that. I can just remember dad walking around just like he hurt and he lost all his money. I don’t suppose it was very much, I never did know how much, but he didn’t complain about it.
We raised all our own food on the farm. We always had a big pit for potatoes and carrots and we always had apples. In the summertime we would just can or bottle, rather, peaches and apricots and pears and all kinds of fruit for the winter time. We were prepared. We talk about a two year supply, we certainly did our two year supply and we all helped do it. I just love to peel peaches to this day. It was great.
Dad was very friendly and my friends were always welcome at my house. Dad liked to joke and kid them along, more so than mother did. Mother was more serious but it was fun to have friends. At night we would—we didn’t have televisions, we’d pop corn and we had an old grafonola, it was a real nice piece of furniture and we’d play records on it. I can’t remember too many of the songs but we had one called “Halleluiah, I’m a Bum!” We used to just love to hear that. And “The Red River Valley” and off the bat right now I can’t remember the songs, but it was just good entertainment for us and we’d play checkers and some kind of cards like Old Maid and Rummy, just a few games like that.
My dad used to like to help people but he’d never—you didn’t know he was doing it. He would just go help. I had two aunts, one of my uncles was in the war and I know my dad took Aunt Edna food all the time and just help her out. He did the same thing for Aunt Eath, we helped them an awfully lot. On my mother’s side, grandma lived to be ninety years old. She had been a widow for many, many years. On Sunday afternoon we would drive over and get her wash—over to Wilson Lane, get her wash and bring back and we would wash it and iron it and then the next Sunday we would take that back to her clean and bring her soiled clothes back for the next week.
My life it getting kind of near to the end. I am getting to be one of those old senior citizens. I have got a big family. I have five boys. My husband passed away almost eleven years ago. But I have had a life that I am so grateful for. I have just been blessed. I have had illnesses but when you think of what the Savior went through you don’t have anything to complain about. I am so thankful for the gospel in my life. It just has gotten me through any situation that I have had. I truly believe the gospel is true one hundred percent. Anybody that will follow and try to keep the commandments and try to keep their lives clean and helpful—charity is truly one of the greatest blessings you can give to other people. I certainly learned hard work when I was growing up and I have never been free from hard work. I love to work. I feel bad that I can’t work now. When I had to give up my flower garden I didn’t think I was going to make it, but my husband took the job over and all my kids have learned to work, every one of them. They have all learned to stay out of debt and to take care of their families. I think just learning to help other people and staying happy, be thankful for what the Lord has given you.